"Well, flying a plane costs a certain amount, and if you can fit two hundred people on the plane you can split the cost two hundred ways, and if you can only fit one hundred people on the plane then you're splitting the cost one hundred ways."

"Ohhh."

Lintalai continues to attend school and be faintly bored by her illiterate classmates and precocious in most of her subjects.

Biyan makes international news when she's been in school for less than a season.

Her parents do not pick her up from school. "Hi, Lintalai!"

"- what happened?"

"More other countries being silly. How was school?"

"It was fine. What did the other countries do?"

"BIyan decided not to issue red credits for this spring, presumably because they expect that there won't be work for those reds when they are grown up and it would be better to start decreasing the population now."

"...then what?"

"The reds burned down a lot of several cities and killed a lot of people and are refusing to do work."

She nods. She holds out her arms to be picked up.

Scoop. Squeeze.

"What are they doing?"

"It isn't clear yet. I think they are going to try to get the reds to go back to work unless they can get replacements really really quickly."

"What are my dads doing," she clarifies.

"Smiling insincerely at people, probably."

"What are they trying to make happen."

"I have no idea. I don't even know what would be a good outcome."

Nod.

"Do you want to go to our house, or do you want to go home?"

"Your house."

So he takes her back. Nertel has the television on with headphones, tilted away from the twins; the twins are playing a counting game on their pocket everythings.

Does the television have subtitles.

She does not have them turned on.